


A Daffodil For the Lonely Two

by sweetNsimple



Series: Orange Roses and White Lilies [3]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Cisco, Asexual Mick, BAMF Caitlin, Caitlin Snow is Killer Frost, Developing Powers, Discrimination, Eddie Lives, F/M, Metahuman Mick Rory, Mick is unusually chatty, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 12:51:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7362193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetNsimple/pseuds/sweetNsimple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mick nodded slightly.  “Jax and Stein are teaching me.”  There was something like childish excitement on his face.  He looked from the scarred bar top to her with a gleeful smile.  “You wanna see?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Daffodil For the Lonely Two

She was beautiful.  Caitlin Snow, heterosexual herself, could admit that the woman’s long, dark skinned legs ending in dainty black stilettos drew even her eyes and that her perfectly proportioned breasts and facial structure niggled at Caitlin’s thoughts.  How was someone so aesthetically pleasing possible?  Even her curly black afro waved and framed her face with almost symmetrical precision. 

She was gorgeous and Caitlin felt plain and unappealing in comparison.  She scowled as she nursed her drink and tried to disappear into the scarred and stained table. 

It didn’t matter that she had come here with Team Flash and some of the Rogues – which was, in itself, a very uncomfortable place to be – she was already prepared to pick up her purse and head home to drink alone.  She could probably talk Cisco into coming with her and she wouldn’t be opposed to Lisa and Hartley joining them, but she already knew it would be impossible to get Barry to leave unless she broke down crying and begging like the small child in the back of her mind wanted to.  Barry was watching Leonard like this was the last time he would ever see his older lover and they had been holding hands under the table since sitting down.

Caitlin couldn’t fault him for it.  Leonard _had_ died.  Caitlin knew what it was like to lose someone and then be disbelieving when they came back. 

She also knew what it was like to lose them again.

Oh, yes.  Caitlin was ready to go.  The woman at the bar graced her with a disdainful look and that only made it harder for her to sit still and pretend like she was at least coping with being around too many people.  They had conquered two booths and were in groups leaning over the back of each other’s seats to be part of different conversations.  Iris, Leonard, Barry, and Eddie had squeezed into one booth while Baez, Hartley, Cisco, Jesse, and herself were huddled in the next; Lisa was ambiguously between them, twisted over Leonard’s shoulder and almost in Hartley’s lap while she spoke with Baez. 

Mick was at the bar and the beautiful woman was leaning into him, smiling at him with perfectly even teeth.  Her amber eyes were flickering like fire and Caitlin knew – just _knew_ – that the two were going to get along fine.

Mick liked fire.

Caitlin tore her eyes away and played with her empty glass.  Unlike her.  She petted the white strands in her hair; more were appearing every morning she looked in the mirror.  If she didn’t think about it, her morning coffee turned to ice in her hands.  She had a bad habit of staring at her laptop while she held her mug and the distraction was proving disastrous for her morning ritual of waking up and preparing herself for another day.  She was closer to Leonard in personality and element. 

She had heard rumors that Mick had accidentally self-combusted a few days ago and had ended up naked in one of the Rogues’ safe houses.  They were changing – aftershocks of the particle accelerator explosion that had slowly been mutating their genes at a rate slower than the first wave of victims.  Before long, they would be exact opposites – Ice and Fire.

Which wasn’t a shame, per say.  She squared her jaw.  It wasn’t.

Except it was.

She never would have considered Mick before he joined the Legends team, but he had changed since then.  The unstable man who had strapped her to a bomb had become a man willing to give his life to protect the future of the human race.  He was sturdy and strong and when she felt like she was falling apart, he was somehow at S.T.A.R. Labs and standing closer than absolutely necessary, his steadfast presence and hard eyes grounding. 

He wasn’t handsome or put together, but he was incredibly intelligent, intuitive, and, at times, indestructible.  Caitlin needed someone like that in her life because, so far, it seemed like everything and everyone she touched broke into so many pieces that they could never be salvaged.

 _‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,’_ She recalled the old nursery rhyme, _‘Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.’_

She glanced back up and the woman was not smiling anymore.  She looked agitated now, and still otherworldly attractive while scowling.

_‘And all the King’s horses,’_

Caitlin excused herself, saying she needed another drink.  Jesse and Cisco were sketching on a napkin, tipsy enough to be brainstorming a device that could turn water to wine because “Think Arthur C. Clarke, Cait!”  Lisa gave her a curious look, glanced toward Mick, and then gave Caitlin a purely vulpine smile.  She must have been rubbing off on Baez and Hartley because their expressions almost exactly matched hers.

“I’m sure you’re _just_ … thirsty,” Hartley purred, and then waved her off as if she had needed his permission.

Cisco was right.  Hartley was a dick.

“Protect your turf,” Baez added, which both confused and flustered Caitlin.  Mick wasn’t _turf_ … and he wasn’t _hers_!

But Caitlin took her chance and made like a sophisticated woman to the bar.

Coincidentally, she was migrating toward the chair on Mick’s left when she caught the tail end of their argument.

“What, did mommy touch you in your no-no place when you were a kid?” The woman asked, and, Thank God, her voice sounded like a chain smoker had tried to gargle nails.  Caitlin would have been horrified if each word out of the woman’s mouth sounded like a song.

Even if she had sounded like a chorus of angels, what she was saying was horrid. 

How was that _relevant_?  What made that a question _anyone_ should _ever ask_?

“You wanna fight me?” Mick growled.  “’Cause it sounds like you’re lookin’ for a fight.”

“Plenty of muscle,” the woman sneered.  “Almost makes up for having a limp dick.”

“Pretty face,” Mick fired back.  “Almost makes up for being a bitch.”

“At least all my parts work.  Sounds like you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“ _Excuse me_?” Caitlin realized when they both swerved to look at her that she was the one who had just hissed.  She struggled for words.  “I believe you’re not wanted here.”

“And who are you?” The woman asked, giving Caitlin yet another destructive onceover.  Caitlin felt as if the woman found every flaw that she was most ashamed of and laughed at them.  “You think you can take me on?  Stick to your books, Disney Princess.”

Caitlin had never thought being called a Disney princess could be so insulting.  Somehow, though, the woman did it, making it sound like the worst thing a grown woman could be called.

Caitlin felt miniscule and defenseless for a moment.

And then she remembered that she was, in fact, a grown woman who did not suffer schoolyard bullies like a girl in elementary school.  It had been years since the popular girls in sixth grade had stuck gum in her hair and laughed at her for tripping down the stairs.

Besides, this wasn’t about her. 

“I think you’re shallow and that you have insulted my friend enough tonight,” she hissed instead, somehow rounding closer to the other woman.  Something dangerous must have glinted in her eyes, or maybe it was that her breath was leaving her in visible puffs of frost despite Saints and Sinners being hot enough for sweat to glisten on the woman’s bare shoulders.

The woman no longer looked at Caitlin like she was inconsequential, but like she was a threat to her safety.  Caitlin wasn’t sure if she was wrong or not.

She _felt_ dangerous and that danger made her feel powerful.

She smirked at the woman.  “I think you should leave,” she purred in her sweetest, most pleasing voice.  She touched just a fingertip to the woman’s arm, tracing it from wrist to elbow, and the woman watched with wide eyes as sweat turned to ice.  Just a little parlor trick, no more than a single thread of menace.

The woman stumbled inelegantly over herself as she deserted her prey and Caitlin and left Saints and Sinners without paying for her drink.  The bartender, at the other end of the crowded bar, didn’t even notice.

Taking a deep breath, Caitlin regrouped.  It wouldn’t do for her to lose control, and she didn’t want to see the kind of person she was if she let herself go.  She had heard stories of Killer Frost from Earth-2.  Cisco’s doppelganger was also a villain there, so Caitlin did not feel as if Killer Frost was part of her future so much as a possibility of what could happen, just like Reverb was for Cisco.

She smiled sheepishly at Mick.  The arsonist turned metahuman was watching her stonily, with some confusion showing through the cracks.

“What was that for?” Mick asked.

Caitlin took the woman’s vacated seat and shifted uncomfortably.  “I don’t need any details of your sex life, but she was definitely being offensive.”

“I don’t have one,” Mick said.  “A sex life.”

Caitlin blinked.  “Oh.”  Her eyebrows drew together.  She wasn’t sure what else to say.

Mick was still looking at her.  “She said I was broken.  Sometimes, I wonder if I’m not and everyone around me is just insane.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sex is weird.  You want me to put my dick in a hole and push back and forth?  What the fuck for?”

“You don’t get aroused?”  Why did she ask that?  Why was that something she would want to know?  Why did it _matter_?

Mick grunted.  “I get morning wood sometimes, but it goes away on its own.  Why?  You gonna diagnose me, doc?”

“Are you asking for a diagnosis?”

“Nah.”  Mick took a swig of his alcohol.  “I have bigger problems.”

Caitlin bit at her bottom lip.  “Mick, can I ask you a personal question?”

“Don’t expect an answer.”

Caitlin nodded.  “Are you asexual?”

Mick cut eyes toward her again.  “Like a plant?”

“Not quite.  Asexuality is when you don’t experience sexual attraction toward others.”  She searched her brain for everything she had learned after Cisco had told her he was asexual.  “Some people who are asexual still like to have sex because it feels good to them or because they enjoy that level of intimacy with their partner.  Other asexual individuals don’t, however – they have no interest in sex.  Some would say that that sex even repulses them.”

Mick huffed.  “I’m not repulsed.  Just not interested.  Don’t want it, don’t need it.”

“But does that sound like you?”

“Does it need to?” Mick asked.  “Do I need a label so that you can understand me better?”

Caitlin sat there, startled by the logic of that question.  _Did_ she?  Everyone had labels – labels kept everything neat and tidy.  Labels made everything easier to understand. 

She knew that finding out that there was a name for people who were not sexually attracted to others had been a relief to Cisco, who had gone through high school and the beginning of college without understanding why he wasn’t like his peers.  Cisco had told her how finding the asexual community had been liberating for him. 

Mick was a different person and it seemed as if he could not care less for there being a term that fit his definition. 

“Labels help,” she finally admitted in a small voice, somewhat ashamed.

“You’re organized like that,” he said.  “You gonna go back to the booth?”

Caitlin glimpsed over.  Lisa had already overthrown Caitlin’s seat at the table and was eyeballing Jesse over Cisco’s head like she was considering the young Wells in an unholy light.

Harry would kill her if he ever found out.

“There’s not really any space over there.”

Mick just shrugged and didn’t tell her to leave.  She felt as if that was his way of asking her to stay.

“Neat trick you did,” he finally said after enough time had gone by for him to finish his drink and for her to order another.  She paid for the woman’s while she was at it.  “With the ice.”

“I hear you can do something similar with fire.”

Mick nodded slightly.  “Jax and Stein are teaching me.”  There was something like childish excitement on his face.  He looked from the scarred bar top to her with a gleeful smile.  “You wanna see?”

She almost said no.

She almost said that it would be dangerous.

Then again, she thought, smiling herself.  Danger made her feel powerful, and they _were_ opposites.  If his fire got out of hand, she could cool things down.

“You know what?” She said.  “I would love to.”

 


End file.
